


Some I let go

by Ever-so-reylo (Ever_So_Reylo)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Depressing, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Grey Reylo, Knights of Ren - Freeform, Meh., Non-Linear Narrative, Other: See Story Notes, War, space travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-18 10:03:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16116143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ever_So_Reylo/pseuds/Ever-so-reylo
Summary: “That doesn’t seem fair.”From the corner of her eye, she can see him nod. “Nothing about this has been.”





	Some I let go

**Author's Note:**

> I have mixed feelings about this fic, and I'm not sure I would recommend it; however, in its first draft it was about 4 billion times worse than it is now. I owe a lot of thanks to the RFFA mods for making it so much better. In particular, huge thanks to Bri and Alexandra for going through this mess and for trying to make sense of it: it was very brave of them and I will forever remember it. Also, thanks to Bri for making that amazing moodboard!  
> All my love goes to shmisolo and reylo-convert, who not only listened to me bitch about this horrible fic for months, but they also read it and looked through it for typos when I decided to add huge chunks to it, like, two weeks before the deadline. You guys are the awesomest friends (and DDs) an LG like me could ever find.
> 
> Please, **see the notes at the bottom for CW (contains spoilers).**

 

 

He decides to leave after the last of the Resistance is located and dismantled—a pitifully small group of fighters scurrying around like ants and trying to pull together a last-minute operation with little to no resources. Weak, wounded animals, practically begging to be put out of their misery.

He stands on the mossy grounds of Fandélane, studying the scene unraveling before his eyes and thinking back to three decades before, when he was little more than a toddler. Remembering the elaborate tales of the Rebel Alliance that Amilyn and Larma would spin when Leia wasn’t around, ready to stop them from filling her son’s impressionable mind with _“things that will keep him up at night. And the rest of the household, too. Han and I like to sleep every once in while, you know, not just deal with the kid’s nightmares.”_ At the time, Kylo recalls, he had been convinced that piloting an X-wing would be the pinnacle of his existence. 

He lands on the planet and oversees the stormtroopers, even though the operation is minor and there is no effective need for his presence. 

“Snoke wouldn’t have bothered. Snoke would have considered the Force Wars won months, if not years, earlier,” Hux reminds him, a little out of breath as he tries to catch up with Kylo in the Finalizer’s corridor. As usual, Kylo ignores him and boards his command shuttle with the execution squad, feeling nothing at the sight of the survivors’ looks of terror as he orders their capture. 

Dameron, the current leader, is the one notable exception. Two officers hold him to the ground until his knees are sinking into the yielding soil, blasters pointed to his head and neck. When Kylo comes to stand before him he is coughing and spitting blood from his mouth. Kylo waits patiently for him to be finished.

“Long time no see, Supreme Leader. Glad you decided to get rid of that… apparatus.” Dameron is smiling. “So, how do we do it, this time? Do you start, or do I—”

Kylo crushes his windpipe with a thought and signals the stormtroopers to stand by. Then he yanks Dameron’s mind open and briskly searches it for images of her. 

She is, of course, already elsewhere. Kylo cannot detect even the faintest traces of her in the Force surrounding him. Nothing of that delicious, lush energy that always lingers after she’s gone. It’s been a while since he received intel that she left the Resistance behind, but even though he knew all along that he wouldn’t find her here, he was still hoping for _something_. A strand. A tug through the bond. A crumb, just to put him on her scent. He doesn’t find it, not any of it, so he channels his disappointment into a sharp Force-tug to Dameron’s scalp. It doesn’t make him feel much better, so goes on his knees and tugs harder, this time using his hand.

There is no information on her whereabouts in Dameron’s mind—not for days, weeks even. As he sifts through what is left of an impressive piloting knowledge, maps of hyperspace routes, and now-useless Resistance plans, he uncovers the memory of giving the order for the attack on Byss. Next to it, buried under heaps of arrogant thoughts and self-deception, is Rey’s tear stained face.

_Please. Poe, don’t go this way. You can’t_ —

He doesn’t let the memory replay in full.

He lifts a finger to signal the stormtrooper to lay down their weapons, and while staring into Poe Dameron’s eyes he snaps his neck with a quick bend of his fingers.

 

…

 

She leaves in the middle of the day. 

No one notices, too busy pouring over holo-maps and taking stock of fuel and ammunition supplies, but even if they had they wouldn’t have stopped her. Loyal to Poe, this remaining bunch, and not so much to… Well. To anything else. Or maybe they are just not eager to admit to themselves how much they’ve strayed. At this point, Rey is too tired to hold it against them.

On her way to the hangar, she passes Calissan in a narrow hallway, his hands stained with grease while he rewires some circuit on a droid Rey cannot recognize. 

“Hey, do you know what happened to that shipment of selenium we were supposed to—oh.”

He lifts his eyes from the hyperscan vindicator and realizes it’s Rey he’s addressing. He quickly looks back down to his work.

“Nothing. Uh... Sorry.”

Rey heads for the hangar, unsurprised—she is in some sort of disgrace, after all. And yet, she feels very little anger—or anything else—as she steals the most garbage-worthy X-wing, which she’ll still doubtlessly be able to trade for something more inconspicuous on the first outpost she’ll stop at. After all, her powers have been growing, and Rey can be very persuasive, these days.

Except when it counts, of course.

As she exits Auratera’s atmosphere, the outline of the mountain that houses the Resistance’ base shrinking before her eyes, Rey’s cheeks remain completely dry. 

 

…

 

“This is a terrible idea,” Aki says lazily, draped askew over the throne. 

It was, of course, built to be Kylo’s, but he hates sitting—and he hates sitting on ridiculous furniture that looks like something out of a promotional holo even more.  

“You mentioned as much.”

“And unnecessary. And very dramatic, but that’s just like pretty much everything else you do, so.”

No one talks to him quite like Aki does. But Aki was the first to believe him over Luke, the first to draw her lightsaber to herself to fight beside him, the first to wipe the blood from her cheek with the back of her hand and smile at him. _“It’s okay, Ben. You know what? I’ve always hated Padawans’ braids anyway_.” She was the first of his Knights, and it allows for some concessions. 

“Noted. Shut up now, will you?”

She doesn’t. “But, if you insist on doing this, which I know you will—I strongly feel that I should at least be the one in charge while you’re gone.”

Kylo doesn’t lift his eyes from cleaning his saber’s emitter. “Sure. If something happens to Jaan, you’re it.”

She seems to think about it for a second. “I’ll take it. Can I smash my lightsaber into a console if something makes me mad, like you used to  back in the good ol' Snoke days? ?”

From the seat next to hers, Bal snorts. “He never stopped.”

They both laugh, and Kylo ignores them as Jaan appears at his side. “Anything I should know?” he asks, voice low amidst the chatter.

Kylo shakes his head. “The usual. Monitor the generals. Keep your eyes open.” Kylo re-inserts the focusing lens. “Watch out for Hux,” he adds, distractedly. Once upon a time, when Kylo had first become Supreme Leader, he found himself frequently concerned over what Hux might attempt. Worrying about the actions of someone so unimportant seems like a luxury now. A waste of time. 

Aki straightens herself. “Can we, say, kill him?”

Kylo—he should probably care, one way or the other. “Sure. Make a holo, if you do.”

It spurs a lively discussion of sorts between his Knights—half about what would be a good way to kill Hux—all the ways, as it turns out—half about who would have to step back from the action to make the holo—no one volunteers and loud, prolonged bickering ensues. Once Kylo’s saber is pieced back together, he stands and heads for the door, unsurprised when Jaan follows him a few steps behind. 

Kylo stops once the door is closed behind them, and sighs. 

“What?”

“Aki is right.”

“Yeah. She often is.”

Jaan shakes his head, as serious as ever. “Tell me.”

Kylo considers simply pretending that there is nothing to tell, but it would require more dissimulation than he’s willing to put forward.

“If I don’t come back—” 

“Kylo,”Jaan scoffs. “You don’t even know if she’s alive.” 

He _knows_. But no point in arguing about it. This is nothing but the millionth reiteration of a conversation he and Jaan have had too many times. 

_“We are here. We have what we wanted. Let’s build the new order we’ve been planning for years. She is just a distraction. Everything else—it’s nothing.”_

“If I don’t come back, don’t come look for me.”

 

…

 

“Are you a smuggler?”

Rey whips around, and finds… no one. Did she just imagine someone asking her if she—

“Miss? Are you a smuggler?”

Rey lowers her gaze by three feet or so and sees him. A boy, humanoid. Human, probably. Rey is bad a guessing children's ages, mostly for lack of practice, but this one seems so young. Almost as young as—

“No.” Something in her chest clenches and burns. “No, I’m not a smuggler.”

“Oh.” He sounds so disappointed, Rey has to smile. His “Really?,” much more subdued, still holds a trace of hope.

“Really.”

“Oh.” He is positively depressed, now.

“Why did you think I’d be a smuggler?”

The boy points behind Rey, to the small freighter she has been working on. It’s—not the best ship she has flown, by far, but not the worst, either. A little old, maybe. Certainly with none of the personality of the—

“Ah. Yeah, I see how you would—Nope, not a smuggler, no. But I travel a lot.”

“But you don’t smuggle goods?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Why?”

He says it like smuggle runs in ion storms and blizzards and gravity shifts, with the Order perpetually breathing down one’s neck, were the most exciting thing anyone could ever hope for. Rey wonders what Han would have said to that.

“Because.”

“What do you do, then?”

Rey shrugs. “I just... travel. Explore. See things.”

He looks so downhearted to hear that, that Rey has to laugh, and the act itself feels a little odd. Rusty.

“I’m sorry I’m not a legendary outlaw. But look what I can do.” She pulls at that gossamer string inside her, and makes the hydrospanner discarded at her feet float upwards, until it’s in line with the boy’s nose.

He gasps. “How—?”

Once, even much less than this would have required minutes of concentration to achieve, and exhausted her in half the time. It all comes so easy, now—just like flexing a muscle. Less than: it’s like breathing, effortless and automatic. 

“Thoja!”

Rey lifts her eyes, seeing a short girl who cannot be much older than she is walking briskly towards them.

“Mom—Mom did you see what she just did?” 

The boy points at the hydrospanner, which is back inside Rey’s toolbox, safely tucked away.

“Thoja, I told you not go far.”

“Did you see what she did? She made it float without—”

The woman smiles at Rey. “I am so sorry if he inconvenienced you.”

“It’s not a problem.” 

“He’s usually better behaved than this. Thoja, apologize to this nice lady.”

Thoja says nothing, his mouth still gaping, and Rey smiles and shakes her head, thinking that maybe she should have done this years ago. Explore the galaxy. Expand her horizons. Meet new worlds. 

Find herself, and whatnot. 

It’s different, not being part of the War. Maybe she should have left soon after Crait, at the first prickles of unease. But Leia had spoken so fervently of hope, and for so long hope was all that Rey’d had. Leaving would have meant giving it up, and giving up was never what got her through years on Jakku unscathed. Mostly unscathed, at least.

“Did he ask if you are a smuggler?”

Rey smiles. “Maybe?”

The woman rolls her yes. “It’s a phase. They were showing a holo about smugglers for a few weeks, and of course…” She gestures with her hand. “Are you from around here?” 

She shakes her head.

“What brings you to Hanna City?”

_“Tintolive Trees.”_

_“What?”_

_“Tintolive Trees!”_

_“Never heard of them.”_

_Rose had turned to stare at Rey with what she had come to privately think of as her ‘you-Outer-Rim-savage’ stare, though considering that they were huddled together under the metal panel of a piloting console, trying futilely to reason with the Falcon’s prickly engines, the effect had been somewhat diminished._

_“The leaves are so fragrant, Rey. You’ll love them.”_

_“Where do they grow?”_

_“Chandrila. In the crystal caves. We’ll go together, once this mess is over. I’ll show them to you. The caves, too.”_

_Rey had smiled. “Sounds like a plan.”_

_“Don’t go with anyone else! I want to show you around. Introduce you properly.”_

_“To Tintolive trees?”_

_“And the fruit! The fruit, Rey. It’s bitter and salty but so good—”_

_“Okay. Fine. I mean, who else would I go with? Threepio?”_

_Rose had laughed. And then she’d stopped. “It’s where they sign treaties and concordances, under Tintolive trees. That’s where peace happens.”_

Rose had been like that—a living contradiction of sort, immensely pragmatic, and yet at times oddly quixotic. Rey wonders if Finn used to tease her for that. If, towards the end, they didn’t talk much anymore, even when they were able to carve a few minutes alone. If they just held onto each other. 

“Visiting a friend,” Rey says, surprised by how even her voice sounds.

“Oh, that’s lovely for you. And there’s so much you can see, while you’re here.”

There is, which is what makes Chandrila unpredictable. The Jedi have a long tradition of holing up in off-the-grid, Outer Rim planets. Ahch-To. Tatooine. Ossus. Rey is _not_ a Jedi, but if someone were to look for her, she figures that that’s where they’d start. So Rey goes elsewhere. Hide in plain sight, and all that. 

“You should make sure your friend shows you around the Senate house. And there are plenty of Old Republic landmarks. The planet used to be somewhat more important, before all the Wars and the odd shifts of the last few years.”

Rey still remembers, Leia telling her that she had moved here after the Empire had been defeated. That her son was born and raised on this planet. 

_“You should go, one day. Maybe it will make you feel less lonely.”_

_“I am not lonely.” Rey had looked around the makeshift Resistance base they had been in the process of building. The Falcon had still been dusted with salt, from the surface of Crait. “There’s over fifty of us here. I could never be lonely.”_

_Leia’s eyes had been knowing. “My bad, then.”_

“How long will you be staying?”

Rey turns to look at her ship. “I will be leaving today, actually.”

 

…

 

Kylo is waiting for his rations to finish hydrating, his mind blank and empty as he stares out of the viewport and into the blinking lights of the Calamari sector, when he has the vaguest impression of sand in the toe of his boot. He spends the following three weeks combing through every desert planet he can find in the Lothal system—charted or not. 

The first day of the fourth week, Aki’s picture pops up on his personal holopad. She is smiling into the holocamera and holding a Loth-cat cub. The image seems recent.

<Still no luck?>

<No.>

<Mmmm.>

Kylo rolls his eyes and reaches for his dinner. <I didn’t ask.>

<I didn’t write a thing.>

<You were about to.>

<No. Not really. Wait, Jaan just said to remind you that you’re Supreme Leader and technically our Master (I mean, we all know better, but that’s technically your title) and that you should just abandon this weird quest of yours and just come home.>

<I’m turning off my holopad.>

<Wait! I have a question!>

<What.>

<Did you, like… actually check your shoes? Because maybe some sand got stuck in them?>

Kylo tosses his pad behind his shoulders and begins to eat.

Three days later he lands on Garel with the purpose of refueling, and when he sets foot on pebbly soil the Force pulses within him so sweetly, it’s all he can do not to keel over. It’s faint and delectable, the trace of the familiar signature that orients his life like a lodestar, his own personal gravitational center. It’s no more than a suggestion, a residual whiff, but Kylo drinks it in like a man dying of thirst.

_Rey._

There is a trail, waning but distinguishable, that leads him to a nearby settlement. It’s a desert village not unlike Tuanul back on Jakku—though, thankfully, with considerably fewer spiritual ambitions. Kylo doubts any of the dwellers have even heard of the Force, which suits him just fine. He gives himself a few seconds to envy them and think of _what if_ s, and then he gets to work.

“Sir.” A group of teenagers is clustered at the outskirt of the settlement, lazily kicking a ball around. They are thinking very loudly, studying Kylo’s civilian clothes and the odd, unfamiliar weapon clasped to his belt, wondering if he’s in any way associated with the Order. It’s not very popular here, but then neither is the Resistance. “Sir? Are you looking for the trading outpost?”

Kylo squints, lifting a hand to protect his eyes from the sun.

“No. I am looking for a girl.”

He scours the minds of every villager, and finds glimpses of a smiling traveler. Young, but not too young. Arrived to the village unexpectedly, and for no reason in particular—at least none that she made manifest. One night, she played Dejarik with some of the younger settlers and lost several times in a row, her frown deepening charmingly with every defeat, and how refreshing, to discover that there is something Rey is not innately good at. Kylo will remember to ask her to play him, when— _if_ —circumstances arise. 

In an older woman’s mind, he finds that over two days she helped repair a speeder bike, and laughed her way through the appalling mess the owner had made of the wiring in the turbonet engines. The villagers—they don’t know her name, nor where she came from, the pretty girl with the brown hair. They have no idea where she went afterwards, did not see her leave and cannot say where she was headed. They just hope that she is safe. And they wouldn’t mind seeing her again, if she were keen on coming back.

_Welcome to my fucking life_ , Kylo thinks drily before wiping their minds of any traces of himself and Rey. 

As he boards his ship, he rolls his eyes and idly wonders why he didn’t murder the teenage boy who seemed to have a lot of inappropriate thoughts about Rey’s breasts. 

Must be getting soft, or something.

 

…

 

After Garel there is Lothal, and then Atollon, and then Outpost 25. Rey stops for several weeks in Glade, when she is out of credits and fuel and would rather earn it than Force her way to her next stop—she is not in a hurry, anyway. She works on rusted machinery and decrepit junkyard ships, watching the acidic rain from the small window of the room she rented, taking care to never step out during the frequent storms. After, it’s Kushibans and very briefly Chenowei. There is a lot to see, both on the planets and in the long stretches of hyperspace that connect them. Every once in a while, Rey’s mind tricks her into forgetting that she’s running away, and it almost feels like a nice adventure.

On a new station orbiting around Yavin she finds Maz, who buys her a dinner of buckwheat noodles and mushrooms, and then tells her about the cantina she wants to set up on an uncharted planet not too far from Takodana, and about the new smuggling routes the Order doesn’t know about yet—or simply doesn’t care. The last time they met, over a year ago, Rey had besieged her with demands for news about the whereabouts of their common acquaintances. Now she asks no questions, and after a while they just eat in silence.

In the end, Maz takes off her glasses, and then tiredly rubs the grooves left by her lenses. They are slightly different from the ones she had on the last time Rey saw her. Then again, everything is. 

“Where is it that you’re going, child?”

Rey shakes her head, because—she used to think she knew. But she’s not sure anymore.

Before leaving, Maz asks Rey to promise to keep in touch. Rey hugs her, and says nothing.

 

…

 

The first time they’d kissed was during the Force Wars, before the turning point.

Just like Kylo has read about the Temple of the Kyber on Jedha, about the Mandalorian crusades and the foundation of the Sith Empire, he imagines that decades, centuries from now historians will write about the Wars of the Force. They will compose the chronicles of Kylo’s side and of the losers, and they will speak of the battles and the politics, the weapons and the treaties, the mountains of credits and the deaths of civilians. Kylo wonders if anyone will guess correctly, that the true turning point after almost a decade was not a more advanced Star Destroyer, or a new strategic alliance, or the control a trading route, but the untimely death of General Organa.

They kissed, Kylo and Rey, during the Force Wars; before the tipping point, in a dark green forest on Akiva’s third moon. Spinning and pivoting from one tall tree to another, their lightsabers shrieking when their blades met, Kylo felt the taste of iron in his throat and sweat pouring down his back. They steadily moved farther and farther away from the plain where most of the fight was taking place, and he thought then that she would kill him, if she had the chance. She charged at him for minutes, hours, swiping at his sides, using the Force to block him and push him and pull, coming forward with attacks from all angles. 

_I taught you this_ , Kylo thought, trying to hold his ground each time she initiated a strike, trying to maintain his focus as she slashed down on him. _You took it, from my head. I let you in._

And then—their sabers were suddenly tight against each other, like on Starkiller Base so long ago, and her fingers closed against his wrist to push him away and regain space, bare skin against bare skin, and—

_i can’t fight him i can’t i don’t want to i can’t i don’t i_

—Rey’s voice, her presence, _herself_ , all of it was suddenly so loud in his head, coating every nook and indentation inside him. It was too—too deep, much to withstand, too _good_ , and—Kylo lost his balance, foot slipping over soft ground and dead leaves, and when she lunged at him there was nowhere for him to escape. 

They stood there, Kylo trapped between the trunk of a centuries-old tree and his grandfather's lightsaber not an inch from his throat, his weapon useless in his hand. Rey’s chest moved up and down in great heaves, the sound of her breathing louder than the stream right beside them, harsher than the screams from the battle in full swing mere meters from them. 

“Rey,” he said. He sounded— _not_ like someone who was about to die. He sounded like an idiot, besotted and proud. He felt strangely at peace, when at every other time he was anything but. “Do it.”

Rey looked at him, shifting back ever so slightly, not to free him but to gain more power for her swing. Her hands tightened around the hilt of her saber, ready to strike, ready to _finish_ this, and then—something contracted on her face. Then she wasn’t a Jedi about to end a war anymore. She was crying, tears spiking her eyelashes and running streaks through the dirt in her face as she turned from him. 

“What are you—”

She stalked away, her grip on the saber shifting to kill the ignition switch while her other hand wiped at her face.

“Where the fuck are you going?”

She kept walking, showing him her soft white nape and her unprotected back. She was… crazy, she was out of her mind if she thought that—

Kylo followed behind her, leaning forward to grab her wrist and pull her around. He covered her hand with his own, forcing her to activate her lightsaber again. The air hissed as it flared.

“Do it. _Jedi_.”

Through his glove the sound of her thoughts was not as amplified as it had been by bare skin, but Kylo could 

— _Leave leave leave i have to leave I have to go before I before we_ —

“Get away from me!”

“No. No, you don’t get to do this, Rey.”

She pushed at him, a clumsy attempt. Kylo compensated against it, using her own Force to pull her closer to himself. 

“I am leaving!”

“No—You don’t get to leave me here!” He thought of Snoke’s throne, of waking up without her, covered in blood and ashes. “ _You don’t get to not kill me, Rey._ ”

She wasn’t crying anymore. “Let me go,” she hissed.

Kylo stepped back, freeing her to leave, but she stayed rooted to spot, looking up at him like—like she needed something from him. Like he could be _different_. Their sabers, still in their hands, vibrated and called to each other like they had ever since Crait. A new development in this messy, unthinkable bond of theirs.

“Rey,” he said tiredly. He’d tried, hating her and harnessing that hate, but it was beyond him. This girl, forever beyond him. “What do you want?”

“You _know_ what I want!”

He shook his head. “I don’t. I thought I did, but—”

“Call back your troops. Call them back and—”

He laughed, humorless. “You know I can’t.” His control over the Order was tenuous at best.

“End this war. Call a truce. Pull back from the territories you invaded and—”

He shook his head. “Rey.”

“—dissolve the Order and its facilities and—”  

“ _Rey._ ”

She quieted, staring at him with liquid eyes.

“What do you want that I _can_ give you?”

She run her hand over her mouth, and they weren’t even touching now, but Kylo could feel it like a stab, the coil of longing coalescing at the pit of her stomach. Of his own. He looked down at her, hair almost unbound and sweat plastering her tunic to her breasts, and thought not for the first time of taking her for himself. Of absconding with her, of feeding her and teaching her, or shielding her from ugliness of all of this.

He moved closer, and the Force hummed between them.

“Rey. Ask me for something that I can give you. Please.”

When she stepped further into him, her lips, warm and salty, trembled under his own.

 

…

 

Rey always blocks the bond, these days, while Ben—Kylo—never does. It makes for an interesting one-way flow of information. Impressions, emotions, stray thoughts. Always him sending, and Rey receiving. It’s never full-blown locations, or spelled out coordinates, but coupled with the knowledge that he’s on her trail, it’s easy to guess exactly how far behind her he is. 

She often wonders why he does not block her from his mind. _Some sort of twisted intimidatory tactic_ , Rey initially thought. _He is trying to confuse me. Or maybe he isn’t even aware, or he simply cannot sever the bond like she can._ The truth is that, no matter what his stock is, Kylo has never been much for mind tricks, not when brute force could be used. And to think that he wouldn’t realize or be able to manipulate the connection while Rey can—that’s simply preposterous. The only plausible answer is that he cares more about being tethered to Rey than he does about taking her by surprise. 

Rey understand this. Understands _him_. The pull between them is hard to ignore—too hard, perhaps.

“You went straight for the dark,” Luke told her on Ahch-To, accusing. According to Leia, that was not the Luke he used to be in his youth. Be as it may, it is the only Luke Rey has met. “You didn’t even try to resist it.”

Some nights, right before sleeping, as she looks up at skies that are as lonely as the one of the Jakku desert—some nights Rey recalls Luke’s outraged, sanctimonious words and they make her laugh. Not the good kind of laugher, the ones she’d share with Rose or Finn or Poe—when Poe was still _Poe_. Rey has been on the run for months, even as everything in her hums and vibrates and pulls for her to go in the opposite direction, and when she thinks back to Luke and what he said to her, her laugh turns bitter and corrosive, leaving an acid taste in her mouth.

“You didn’t even try to resist it,” he’d said.

_Oh, Luke. If you only knew._

 

…

 

He knows from pillaged memories that she wears her hair in braids these days, and that she is even more slender than she used to be. There is a small scar on her temple, white and half moon shaped, that he’d like to ask her about, and her eyes are different. 

Stronger, harder, sadder. 

It’s odd, that when he dreams of her she always comes to him the way she was on the Supremacy. Dark robed and bright eyed, his grandfather's lightsaber clutched between her hands. She look young, so much younger than he knows her to be as she lies at his side; she calls him Ben again, and she asks the damnedest of all questions. 

_Will it be alright?_

He always wakes up before he can answer her.

 

…

 

After Byss, Rey holds on to the Jedi texts for a few months, without quite knowing why and without ever reading them. She decides to dispose of them when she trades in her ship for a smaller one, and it’s an easy choice, when the only other option is getting rid of the macrobinoculars Finn bought at a market on Onderon; or Snap’s lucky dice; or Paige’s holocron, the one that Rose entrusted Rey with when it became clear that maintenance workers were not going to be spared by the conflict, not any more than X-wing pilots.

“Just in case you make it and I don’t,” she’d said. “Finn’s stuff… I don’t even know where he kept some of it. I don’t even know if he—” Rose’s voice had broken a little, and before Rey could say anything someone had come to call for assistance with another crisis in the hangar bay. Rey had just stood there, staring at Rose’s hunched back, trying not to think about Finn. Awkwardly holding an object that should have never been in her hands. 

_I didn’t have to be like this_ , Rey’d thought, confused, shell-shocked. _I thought it wouldn’t be._   

One day, she starts a fire on Endor, and as she feeds the books to the flames, one falls open at her feet. She bends to pick it up, turning it over in her hands, and her eyes fall on the first line of the page.

_The truth is naught but what one makes of it_

Rey throws it into the fire, and watches it burn.

 

…

 

It was Leia who proposed the treaty, and Leia who brokered it—for the most part. To the surprise of his admirals, and to a lesser extent of his Knights, Kylo was immediately receptive to it, although he was not directly involved in the proceedings until the very end.

“Someone else should be in charge of the negotiations, Supreme Leader,” Hux had snapped when the first tentative inquiries came, after months of increasingly bloody open conflict that seemed to gain next to nothing to either side. “The fate of the Order shouldn’t be decided over a _family dinner_.”

Kylo had ignored him, but a glance at his Council had revealed that they thought delegating might be a good idea. Jaan had nodded, and Bal hadn’t tried to minutely cut the air supply to Hux’s lungs like he often did. So Kylo, who had little to no interest in sitting across from his mother for days, possibly weeks, had consented to have Jaan and General Haykin represent the First Order.

The treaty ceremony on Coruscant, of course, was Leia’s idea.

“Fuck politicians,” Aki snorted, trying and failing to find a way to hide her saber into her robes. “And their love for useless diplomatic functions.”

“Things like this do manage to send the message across.” A lifetime ago, Kylo had been Senator Organa’s son, after all.

“To all sides,” Jaan added, staring pointedly at Leia’s party on the other side of the room. The discontent regarding the treaty among the Order’s ranks was understandable, simply because the Resistance, in its impoverished and undermanned condition, stood to benefit more from the cessation of hostilities. The rage and resentment seeping from a large group of Resistance fighters was… Perhaps understandable, but not rational. The Resistance would have been snuffed out, without this armistice. Poe Dameron’s attitude, and the disdain he and most other members broadcasted both verbally and within the Force, was simply idiotic. _A hothead_ , Kylo thought after a few moments, when Leia turned to whisper to him. _Possibly dangerous_. As a hothead himself, Kylo knew enough to feel a shade of worry. 

A little further on Leia’s right side, Rey’s expression was unreadable, the link between them sealed shut. Her hair, he noticed, was long. Unbound and lightened by the sun and so much longer than on Akiva, reaching down to the middle of her back. Kylo thought about their last meeting often enough to know that the memory was accurate.

When she caught his gaze and then immediately averted her eyes for a few seconds… and then abruptly turned and exited the ballroom, Kylo—he did the only thing he could think of. 

“Where are you going?” Aki’s tone was plaintive. 

“Have the Knights keep an eye on the Resistance pilot.” A pause. “On all of them.”

“Are you leaving? Why does the Supreme Leader get to leave and lowly me has to stay?”

Jaan looked at her pointedly, and then possibly even _more_ pointedly, until it somehow seemed to dawn on her. “Oh. _Oh_. Well… good luck, I guess.”

Kylo ignored her as he made his way out of the room and under one of the arcades, barely glancing at the officers of varying ranks cluttering the hallway as he followed her trail. Kylo’s strengths within the Force had always been of the blunt kind—fighting and killing, prying minds open and extracting information, telekinesis—and this new ability of his, to hone in on Rey and find her thread of energy within the most garbled of tangles, surprised him. 

Then again: that Rey had brought nothing but surprises to him, from their first meeting to the very last.

He found her behind a blast door she should not even have been able to open, in a library in which he vaguely remembered being told to be more quiet as a child. Probably when the Senate was in session, and Han was being himself by going on reckless smuggle runs while Leia was busy taking care of her one true love—the fucking galaxy.

“It doesn’t make any sense. The treaty.” Facing away from him, Rey run her fingers down the spine of a red book, too far for Kylo to be able to read the title. Something about Mandalore, judging from the alphabet.

“Does it not?” He thought of going to her, wanted to, but it seemed like a bad idea. Like she might not want it. 

Her hand moved to another book, in the shelf right above her head. “Well. It does for us. But not for the First Order. Not for _you_.”

He took a step closer. Definitely not enough, but she didn’t move away or draw her weapon—enough to accelerate his heartbeat.

“How are you, Rey?” He could not remember the last time he’d asked the question to someone, or the last time he cared about the answer.

“Why did you accept the treaty?”

It was hard to think, when she was so near. The channel between them—it was still slammed shut, but the gate was pulsating, as if about to overflow. “You know why I accepted it.” 

Rey’s hand fell to her side, and she turned to look at him. So dangerous to his peace of mind, this girl. The amount of power she wielded in the galaxy, both because of her own strength and because of her hold on Kylo, was truly frightening.

“Did you tell Leia that I would agree to a cessation hostilities? After Akiva?”

She scrunched her eyes shut. “I didn’t. I couldn't know.”

He nodded. 

She looked around the library. “I didn’t think it would really happen. The treaty. I didn’t think that—it’s like both sides hate it. They feel like they are being strong-armed into this, like the other side is not giving up anything. Like it will maybe last a short time, and then it will all start again. This cycle of war and peace, that has been going on for thousands of years. ”

It was true, and Kylo didn’t know what to say, so he just looked at her, at the way the folds of her dress failed to cover the lightsaber at her belt. The dress itself filled him an inordinate amount of some unidentifiable feeling—not because of what it was, but what it was _not_ : Jedi robes. Maybe hope, hope that if she has not wanted to commit herself to the light side, she might be satisfied to be with him in whatever grey area Kylo could dig out for the two of them. 

She looked at him again, firmly this time, and leaned back against a shelf full of books older than her by at least two millennia. 

“So, we won’t be...enemies anymore. Once you sign the treaty. Tonight.”

_That is not how armistices work_ , he wanted to say. But it seemed unnecessarily cruel, and not wholly true, anyway.

“I don’t think we are enemies, no.”

There it was. The reason for this treaty, at last. Not the prosperity of the galaxy or the well-being of its dwellers, not a grab for power, for once. Just—these words, this opportunity. This moment alone with her.

“Rey—”

“It’s been there for so long,” she said looking at her own feet, voice and lips trembling. Kylo went to her, because he couldn't _not_ go anymore. “It’s been there, between us, since Starkiller base, and then after Snoke…” She covered her mouth with her palm. 

“Why are you crying?”

“You know what I mean, right?”

He nodded, slowly. “I do.” This close to her, he couldn’t reason. He felt starved and full to the brim at the same time. “I’ve known before you, I think.” Since Takodana, maybe. Since someone named her in his presence. Before that, even.

“Ben. What do I do?” She stepped even closer then, cheeks glistening as she reached out for him, fingers closing around his wrist. 

It was different, from their kiss in Akiva, when he hadn’t known what to expect, and he’d just followed his instinct and hers through their bond. It had been simple then, an impulse of sorts, but this time there was a memory to live by and the whisper of a possible future if only they’d manage to do it right, and it was equally elating and paralyzing. It was Rey who came to him in the end, pushing up on her toes to brush her lips against his jaw, holding onto his shoulders because he was unable to bend to meet her.

“You’re too tall.”

His erection was obscenely hard. This—it was about sex, and yet not at all. And yet—yes completely. It was about wanting her, in every single way. The Force wanted this too, Kylo could tell from the pleasure pooling at the bottom of his spine, coiling inside her head.

He angled his head down. “What about now?”

For the first time since the throne room, she smiled at him.

“Better.” She swallowed and leaned closer, and Kylo could smell her skin, soap and salt. “I saw it in my vision, this moment. Back on Ahch-To. I saw the books, and the Senate dome, and I saw you. Like this.”

Her lips were pliant and soft, but she did not kiss him back. Kylo wanted to—the things he wanted to do to her could fill a library, or fit in one single word—but also he wanted her to want it, to want _him_ , too. Her chest rose in a deep breath, and then she exhaled and her mouth opened just enough, the bare minimum to let her tongue slide against his, first just a little, shy and hesitant and then more boldly, enough that he could taste her and then—

His hand came to the bare center of her back and pressed her to him, pushing her against one of the shelves before he could order himself not to, grinding against her. His breathing grew ragged, and then hers, too, meeting somewhere in the air between them as he tugged at her clothes with single-mindedness and no grace at all.

_Stop me. Stop me if you don’t want this because—_

She didn’t answer him, but his trousers were so much more uncomplicated than the layers of her robes, and he let her open the fastening and take him out and stroke him with choppy movements while his hands trembled, her thumb dragging on his tip and making him grunt. 

“Rey.” 

_I am going to come on your pretty dress._

_I saw this_ — _I took this right from your head._ She stopped pumping him, arching into him for another deep kiss. _What do I do?_

He truly had no idea. 

_Ben. What do you want?_

He sent more images to Rey, or maybe she stole them from him, of her naked and of him, fucking her and filling her with his spend and then licking her pink and clean to start all over again, until she couldn't remember a time when he had yet to be inside her. Of her lying underneath him, looking up at him, quiet and trusting as he just pulled from her all the things that he wanted.

She arched into him and something in her robes gave, enough room for Kylo to pick her up, to set her on top of one of the shelves as his hand positioned behind her knee, to bend it and lift her thigh up, arousal swirling hot between them and making his movements clumsy. The bond pulled tighter, making the distance between them disappear, and he didn’t sink as much as collapse into her sweet, wet cunt. Just this side of too small, gripping him tight enough that it felt as if she was trying to hold him to her. Her pain cycled through him through the bond, mixed with the pleasure coiling in his balls, and then they were panting in each other’s mouth.

“Fuck.” 

She looked up at him, stupefied, cheeks pink as the heels of her hands dug deeper into his shoulders, and then let ought one single, breathless laugh.

“I can see _everything_. Inside you.”

He could too. He tried to move, gingerly, but the friction was too much, and having her so far inside his mind, lapping at him like tidal waves, it drove him out of control. They were overlapping completely now, him and her, and he could feel all of it like it was his—her loneliness and her fear and her hope that this was finally the beginning of something. Her deep belief that Kylo was better than he knew himself to be, her determination to convince him of it. They felt like _one_ and it was brilliant and still only half of what Kylo truly wanted, being surrounded like this by her cunt, her mind. 

_Look at this_ , he thought at her, surrounded by her, not talking about her naked body or the tight feeling of welcome inside her. _You were never going to be a Jedi._

Rey exhaled a laugh, “Neither were you.” He kissed her throat, palmed her ass and her breasts, and Rey’s head fell backwards. “I love your hands,” she whispers at the ceiling.

He let himself move then, within the rich, wet pulse of her body and the shrine of her mind around him, his body twitching with relief at the feeling of finally fucking her. He knew nothing about making it good for her, but the mental feedback looped between them, the feeling of her cunt pulling the pleasure out of him and in turn that same pleasure blooming and swelling in her cunt, making her grip his shoulders tighter.

“I want to learn,” she whispered in his ear. “How to do this well, so that I can make you less sad.”

He came with a rush of blinding pleasure, dragging her with him, a loud groan punched out of his throat as she bit his collarbone. It felt a bit like losing himself, and he wondered if was always going to be like this, his body so overwhelmed by the sensation of having her that he’d forget everything else. Then, after seconds or maybe minutes, he looked down at her and found her staring up at him, felt her serene and quietly happy, and decided that he could get used to the total loss of control. That he would.

There was a sound in the corridor outside—perhaps one of the guards forgetting himself for a minute, speaking too loudly. Still, it had the effect of pushing Kylo a bit further into his own body and outside of Rey’s mind, forcing him to take charge of himself. 

The treaty needed to be signed. And the diplomatic mission had to be carried out. Hard to remember how to be the Supreme Leader, when he finally felt like a human after so long.

“We have to go.”

“We do.” She kissed him softly on the cheek, and then disentangled herself from him, knees wobbly and weak. He knew he should probably say something to her, something reassuring or even just kind, but his mind was numb and complacent, and all he could think of was his come dripping down her thigh, of replacing it with more later, after the ceremony. He wouldn’t let her go home, but keep her here for himself until he was done with her, forever. Or until he could leave with her. If the armistice wasn’t going to hold… well, then. He’d take her elsewhere. Deep space, the unknown regions. He didn’t need anything. _They_ didn’t need anything.

He slammed the bond open, for her to see all of this, to give her a chance to say no. Slowly but meticulously, she continued re-fastening the opening of his pants, cinching his belt at his waist and straightening his saber on its clasp. She didn’t lift her eyes, but her could feel her smile.

“Ben.”

“If you don’t want to—”

“As long as my friends are fine.”

Kylo nodded in promise. _Whatever you wish_.

“As long as the war is really over, I will go wherever—”

The door sprung open with a swishing movement, letting in the distant sounds of the celebration, now much louder than they had been when Kylo left the ballroom. His first instinct—shoving Rey behind himself and positioning his lightsaber in front of them—was met by an incredulous look and an elbow in his side, while Rey stepped around him to stand at his side.

_I’m the one who saves your life, usually._

Jaan came in, and Kylo relaxed his stance. “What do you—”

“Kylo.” His tone was somber. “I need to talk to you. Urgently.” Jaan glanced at Rey with a flicker of something that could have been distrust or worry, and then again at Kylo. “The Jedi—”

“She stays,” he answered, right as she muttered something that sounded like _Not a Jedi, obviously_. Her amusement seeped inside him, cutting briefly though his apprehension. “What is it?”

Jaan took one even breath. The corner of his mouth twitched with tension. “General Organa.”

Something tightened in Kylo’s chest. “What about her?”

“She is dead.”

Somewhere behind him there was a clanky sound, something heavy and metallic falling to the marble floor and bouncing once, then twice, then three times. A few seconds later, his grandfather’s lightsaber rolled into his field of view and came to a stop at his feet. 

_Rey._

He felt warm fingers squeeze around his own. His mind was dizzy, empty, like she’d pulled out of him too abruptly, leaving behind a space with the shape of her inside him.

“What did you say?” he asked Jaan, surprised by his own calm.

“We think... poison. Maybe. Kylo, it’s not from our side. I don’t…” Jaan shook his head. “We had our eyes on the Admirals and their aides. I… I don’t know how they would have done it.” Jaan swallowed, heavy. “Leia’s second in command is evaluating whether to go through with it. The treaty.” 

Kylo turned to Rey. “Who is that?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

Rey’s eyes were wide, and Kylo thought that she looked scared—scared like he’d never seen her. “Poe. It’s Poe Dameron.”

 

…

 

He almost has her at a refueling station on Oricon.

Rey feels the telltale pinprick of his mind while she is refueling her ship—a sort of itch in the bond as the wall she keeps erected between them cracks a little due to the proximity, first superficially and then deep within its roots. Simply impossible to maintain its structural integrity, these days, if they are on the same planet. Not after they—

“Stop,” she orders the man who is filling her tank with high-pressure gas. “I have enough.” 

He looks at her, puzzled. “You’ve paid for twice as much fuel, lady.”

Rey runs towards the entry ramp, her hand reaching to her side to make sure that her lightsaber is still there. 

“Keep the rest, I don’t need it.” Though she does, of course. And the credits… Shit. Except that she needs to get away _more_. For a moment, Rey pauses and considers delivering a subtle command, ordering the man to lie about her presence on the planet. But Kylo will be here in minutes, and he will be able pry the information out of the man’s mind, anyway. Rey has enough on her conscience as it is, so she uses just a touch of the Force to push the man out of the way when he remains reluctant to stop the fuel transfer, and slams the door shut, activating the engines and pushing out of the atmosphere as fast as her transport will go.

Several hours later, her hands are still shaking, and the back of her head feels raw and tender.

 

…

 

“Myrkr”

“What?”

“She’s on Myrkr.” 

_What the fuck is she doing on_ — “She is not.”

“Galen saw her. Heading there, on a civilian transporter.”

“Why was Galen on a civilian transporter?”

Aki leans back in her seat, and the holocamera loses focus for a moment. “Do you remember, a long long time ago, back when you used to be invested in Supreme Leadering this galaxy into its rightful state and would actually come up with policies and look for the best systems of governance to avoid the mistakes of your parents and of those who came before you, in an effort to bring order and stability in a—”

“When did he see her?”

She sighs. “A few hours ago. He’s patrolling the Myrkr system. Like you said we should, since it’s crawling with criminals. He tried to get in touch with you, but couldn’t.” Aki takes a sip from a mug. Probably caf, knowing her, the bitter the better. “It might not be her. Galen wasn’t sure, and you know we can’t use the Force much there. Personally, I have my doubts that she’d be so stupid as to travel to a place where she cannot sense danger approaching or use her best assets to defend herself.”

“She might not know,” Kylo muses out loud.

“Not know?”

“About the Force. About the ysalamiri bubble.”

“Mmm. Possible. The Luke Academy wasn’t exactly known for its thoroughness. Mainly running up and down steps and those awful three-hour long meditations. _‘No sleeping, Aki.’_ Ugh!”

“Rey only trained with Skywalker for a matter of days. It would have not come up.”

Aki shrugs. “Well. She’ll realize soon enough.”

Or she won’t, and she’ll be defenseless without realizing it. And even if she does, she might not know, she might panic. Kylo remembers the first time he was cut off from the Force, the emptiness and sheer terror of it.

“I’m going after her.”

“Oh for fuck’s—This is the stupidest idea I’ve ever—”

He stands from his seat, turning his head to check on his fuel levels. It will take him over a day to reach the Myrkr system. He thought she was in a completely different place. Rey. _Rey._ “I’ll be in touch.”

“Yeah, right. Of course. You totally will be.”

“Use my comlink for emergencies.”

“Kylo.”

He is about to end the call, but there is a splinter of something in her tone, and he hesitates. 

“What?”

Aki is biting her teeth, and he has known her now for half his life. What she’s about to say, he’s aware, has been on her mind for some time. “It’s hard, without you here. It’s you we swore loyalty to, not—” she gesticulates vaguely “—building dams in the Herrik system, for galactic minimum wage, you know?”

Kylo nods, and the irony of it does not escape him. The tension between committing to an ideal as opposed to a person is something he has to live with every day. It’s what has Rey hop from one side of the galaxy to the other, he believes. 

“I know,” he says.

“It just…” She shakes her head. “It doesn’t seem like it’s going to end. This.” She gesticulates vaguely in the air.

“... This?”

“You running after her, and her trying to elude you. If you’re really equals in the Force, she’ll always be one step ahead of you. And you’ll always be slightly behind her. It just… it will never end.”

Kylo doesn’t know what to respond to that, mostly because it’s true. It’s been months, and the closest they’ve been is Oricon, and that was... not close enough, not at all. Aki is right: Rey knows he’s after her, and she’s not going to be able to settle and build a life for herself as long as he continues looking for her. Maybe going back would be for the best thing, but—

_She’s not going to be able to build a life for herself, anyway_ , he wants to tell her. _I have been inside her—I know._

“I have to go,” he says. He can feel a muscle in jaw work. 

Aki nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. Either way,” she is smiling now, if a little sadly, “take care of yourself, okay?”

 

…

 

She has been on the planet for a day or so when she realizes that she cannot feel—anything.

Nothing. Nothing from the Mon Calamaris playing Dejarik in the corner, or from the waiter who just brought her a second portion of stew. Nothing from the band that has been playing a variant of the same song for the past two hours. It’s destabilizing, and Rey tries to recall when it started, if it was like this the day before, but all she can remember is being so _tired_ when she arrived, and just wanting to rest and to sleep and to forget everything for a moment.

And now—silence. She focuses on the mug of caf in front of her, reaches out to the Force to tip it over, and…

For the the first time in years, in doesn’t work. It’s like before she knew about the Force—before Finn, before Maz, before— _before_. Even though it’s actually much worse than that, because it’s as if the part of her brain she has been using to keep herself alive has suddenly atrophied and stopped functioning. 

It doesn’t bode well. It bodes, in fact, like absolute shite.

With a mounting sense of panic, Rey closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She digs deeper into her mind, flexing and straightening. Reaches out towards her surroundings with a broader range, a wider angle, trying to find a flicker of the Force to anchor herself to, looking for a ripple in the ocean, for something, anything to knock around. There is _nothing_. Just utter, terrifying stillness, uncaring of her attempts at disruption.

Something in her chest knots in dismay. And then—

“It’s not you.”

Then _he_ arrives, and her stomach drops.

_No. No, no, no._

Her eyes are still closed. And the Force—it’s not currently speaking to her. So that Rey doesn’t know how it is that she knows it’s _him_ who just sat next to her. His voice. His scent, probably. By all logic, she should be intimately familiar with it, by now.

“It’s the planet.” His tone is calm and matter of fact. “The creatures who inhabit it, to be precise.”

Rey has her lightsaber, of course. Other weapons, too, and she could still use them. But it doesn’t take a lot of strategic reasoning, to figure that if it comes down to physical strength, an uninjured Kylo would win with little effort. If he attacks her… but he won’t, will he? He wouldn’t make the first move. Probably. Maybe. 

Rey doesn’t know. Since the end of the War she has learned to expect the unexpectable from people, and why should _he_ be any different? Surely not because their minds have been deeply entwined—it means nothing. One can lie in the Force: Luke certainly did, and from what Rey has gathered, the Jedi and the Sith orders have done nothing but breathing lies to themselves and others for the past millennia. 

“How did you find me?”

She hasn’t seen him in... years, almost. If one doesn’t count the holos—and even those, they’ve been more and more infrequent in the last few months. And yet, when she opens her eyes what surprises her is not that his hair is shorter than it used to be, or the fact that the scar she left is now only one of many, all smaller, almost invisible. Nor his eyes, either, which are... different—though how, Rey cannot say.

What surprises her is his clothing. Nothing like what she would expect from the Supreme Leader of the galaxy, a nodal point in the darkness of the Force. He’s wearing civilian clothes, smuggler clothes, dark gray with very little black. 

He looks like himself, and yet not. Her heart leaps toward him, and Rey curls her hand into a fist, using the pain of fingernails digging into the flesh of her palm to rein it in.

“One of my Knights saw you on the second moon.”

Rey lowers her gaze to her cup of water, pressing her lips together and wondering whether she was too careless, or simply luckless. It’s pointless: not a lot to be done about this, now, is there.

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

From the corner of her eye, she can see him nod. “Nothing about this has been.” 

The band’s song comes to a boisterous end and stops abruptly, yanking away a layer of background noise. Kylo is still sitting in front of her, hasn’t moved an inch, but the sudden relative quiet of the cantina makes him seem oddly closer.

“I wish you’d stop this,” Rey says, not looking at him.

“Do you.”

It’s not a question. Which is for the best, since she has no idea how to answer.

“It’s weird, without the Force,” Rey says distractedly, trying to assess herself. Simpler, maybe. But odd. There is no bond vibrating between them, but Kylo’s presence doesn’t feel any less material. He still takes up a lot of space in her head. “Are you going to try to kill me?”

He doesn’t seem surprised by the question. “You know I am not,” he says calmly.

“I don’t know why you’re here, then, because—”

“Come home, Rey.”

She should laugh in his face. 

“I have no home in the galaxy. You made sure of it.”

He stares at her like it’s not a problem. Like everything is easy. “Then we’ll make one.”

She lifts her gaze then, because he says—the most _impossible_ things. She lifts her eyes and looks at him, at his face and the scars and those weird eyes that she cannot place anymore, and thinks that the years, the War, have not been kind on him. He seems so much older than the first time she saw him, in the orbit of Takodana—decades, centuries older. As old as Rey feels.

“Do you remember, when you said my friends would be fine? When you _promised_.”

He presses his lips together. “I promised what I thought I could do. Then the treaty was forfeited and—”

“You were Supreme Leader. You didn’t have to do _anything_ unless—”

“It took us years to get to this point—to gain true control of the Order. Years of quashing dissent and putting trusted people in strategic positions and killing the Admirals and--”

“Oh, so you killed more people?

He leans forward, and suddenly he looks—angry. Not the indiscriminate fury she used to expect from him, but a cold, sharp anger that she recognizes too well. From herself.

“What about Byss?”

Rey shakes her head, and opens her mouth to say that she—she didn’t want to—she tried not to, she _tried_ to stop it, but it never—

“I know, Rey.” He’s studying her like he’s in his head. Like he really does know. “That’s what it is, right? Not the things that I’ve done, but things you think I’ve made you do? Right?”

Rey’s fingers tighten around her cup, and her mind spins as she thinks about how to get out of here, away from him, how to put enough distance between them that he won’t be able to reach her, that he won’t see, he won’t know. Then his hand inches closer, tanned and calloused, and all she can think of is that—he stopped wearing gloves. 

His fingers close around hers. “Will you come with me?”

She should pull back. She shouldn’t let him touch her. It has never worked well for them.

“Come where?” 

“Wherever.” A pause. “Upstairs, for now.”

She shakes her head.  “No.”

“Rey.”

She withdraws her hand, and folds it in her lap. Orders herself to keep it there.

“Rey. Just come upstairs.” He looks so tired. A tired as she feels. “It will be like before.”

“It won’t. It… It can’t be like before.”

He sighs, and looks at her for a long moment. “I know.”

_Kind_. It occurs to Rey that today, more than five years since the battle of Crait, a little less than two since General Organa died, almost one since Rey left what remained of the Resistance, Kylo’s eyes look sad and kind.

 

…

 

“What—what did you say in there?”

Rey initially thought she hadn't heard Poe correctly. No, not true. Rey _knew_ that she’d heard him correctly, but she hoped to be wrong. He’d spoken quickly, but that was to be expected, because after Leia’s death and becoming the de facto commanding officer of what little was left of the Resistance, after pulling out of the treaty and having to scramble for new resources, Poe didn’t exactly have time for long speeches and unhurried conversations. And then, two months ago, the batter on Rishi. Finn and Connix, gone, just like that—Snap, too. Rose and three quarters of the maintenance crew killed in an explosion less than two weeks later. There hadn’t been time for funerals yet, not even to think about them, and by now it was starting to feel like it had been too long, anyway. Like they had to move on.

_I’m so sorry, Finn._

“Poe—wait.”

“What do you need, Rey? Make it quick.”

The first time Rey had met Poe aboard the Falcon—now long, _long_ gone, debris orbiting in the Kellis system—he’d smiled at her and she’d thought him handsome, and friendly, and even charming. For the life of her, Rey couldn’t remember what his face had looked like at the time.

“The attack.” Rey hurried to catch up with him, a little winded. “Which facility did you say you’re planning to strike?”

“It’s nothing you have to concern yourself with.”

“I know. But I thought you said—”

“Don’t worry. The pilots have almost reached Byss, and—”

What? 

_No. No, not Byss._

Rey flexed a muscle in her head, using just a touch of the Force to slow Poe down and step in front of him. Poe had never manifested any real understanding of the Force, but it was clear from his expression that he knew exactly what Rey was doing.

“Poe, you can’t. The intel from Byss—”

“The intel is precisely why I _can_.”

“No.”

“Rey, I need to be in the command room five minutes ago--”

“The facilities there, they are full of children—you won’t be hitting the Order, you’ll hit recruits that might not even be there voluntarily—”

Poe stopped trying to get around her and narrowed his eyes. “Why have _you_ heard of this?”

“Why shouldn’t I have?”

“It’s well above your rank.”

Rey huffed out a laugh. And then--then she realized that Poe was not joking. “We’re a little past rank, don’t you think? There isn’t enough of us left to string one single chain of command—”

“Stay out of sensitive information, Rey.” He tried to step to the side, but Rey was too quick for him. She planted a boot in front of him, almost making him trip.

“Poe, you cannot order a strike there. Are you crazy? Leia would have never…”

He leaned into her, and it was all Rey could do to stand her ground. Poe’s fury was tinged with desperation more and more often, these days. It petrified her into silence.

“Leia. Is not. Here.” It was entirely possible that Poe had been like this all long--impulsive and power-hungry. Once upon a time, though, the peaks of his anger used to be followed by soft valleys. Now...Not anymore, as far as Rey could tell. “The enemy is building an army, and we need to—”

“Of. Children. An army of _children_.”

He moved even closer, his tone assuming a dangerous, hissing quality. “Is that the problem, Rey? What bothers you? That they’re children?”

“Of course it—”

“Or that they’re Force sensitive? Eh, _Jedi_?” 

The venom in his voice—it made Rey recoil. Surely he wouldn’t--

“They are—Poe, they are _innocent_. They are likely there against their will, or Kylo Ren is all they’ve ever known to help control powers that they were born with—”

“Then they will die like _fucking heroes_.”

Rey was too stunned by the vehemence behind Poe’s words to prevent him from walking past her. She stood rooted in stupefied silence for—too long. He’d almost reached the turn to the command room when she found her voice.

“You cannot do this, Poe. You cannot give this order. I—this is War, and we’ve done a lot we cannot be proud of, but this… We won’t be able to go back from this.”

Poe didn’t stop, nor he turned around.

“You don’t understand, Rey. It’s already happening.”

 

...

 

He wakes up expecting to see her gone, and there’s already acid in his throat, regret that he didn’t take her once more, that he didn’t fuck her as hard or as slow as he imagined in the countless nights of the past months, that he only did a tenth of the things he wanted for them.

That they didn’t talk much. That he didn’t _tell_ her.

And then—then he feels it, an itchy feeling in the back of his head, and Kylo’s mind is flooded with relief and the sweet tang of her proximity. His cock hardens and his heart pulsates sweetly.

_Ah._

“If I’d said yes.” 

She is sitting on the windowsill, wearing not a stitch of clothing, looking even wilder in the moonlight. His beautiful desert animal. Deadly in her stillness. Even deadlier than she was in the forest, or brandishing lightsabers that did not belong to her in Snoke’s court. Good on her for choosing a planet with three moons, Kylo supposes. The night suits her.

She lifts her hand to the glass, chasing a raindrop with her fingertip, leaving a trace through the condensation. “If I’d said yes, back with Snoke. Do you think I could have brought you to the light?”

Kylo looks around the room until he finds a clock that displays the local time. It’s only about halfway through the night cycle. He cannot have slept more than an hour or two. Closer to one, likely. He is perfectly awake now, and—

Kylo is not one to lie, but the things he’d do for her know no boundaries, so he finds his center and says: “Perhaps. Or perhaps I’d have just brought you to the dark.”

There is no point now, after everything, in telling what they both know to be true. That if she’d said yes they’d have met somewhere in the middle, and happily left the galaxy to eat itself from the inside.

That they could still do that.

“Come here, Rey,” he orders. He begs.

_Come here._

Rey hesitates for a quiet moment, and then her bare feet hit the floor.

 

…

 

“In a galaxy far, far away—”

“Which galaxy?”

“Hush. Students, these days.” Luke huffs, blowing air in his short hair. “In a galaxy far, far away, legend has it that a fox existed.”

“I am not your student. And you’re a ghost. And if you have to come to me in my dreams or whatever this is, at least you could tell me something useful—like why I can’t get Niman right--and not stuff about… what is it that you said?”

“A fox.”

“A fox?”

“A small, agile creature. Very similar to a vulptex, if you will—you can find them on Crait.”

Rey does not usually let herself think of Crait, the beginning of the end. She just nods at Luke to continue. He’ll be gone soon enough, anyway, or she’ll wake up and be free of this.

“It was said that the fox was given a gift from the gods: she was destined never to be caught, no matter how tirelessly she was pursued. Her abilities were well known in the galaxy, and no one dared to chase after her. No one, with the exception of one single hunter.”

“A hunter.” Rey can’t help but sounding dubious.

Luke nods. “The hunter, too, was given a gift by the very same gods. He was destined to catch everything he wished. And everyone, bar none and no one. As you can see, Rey, the fox, the hunter, and the gods themselves, they were all faced with a contradiction: what to do, when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?”

Rey swallows. She doesn’t want to care about this story. About what Luke is telling her.

“Why does he want her?”

Luke cocks his head. “Mm?”

“What does the hunter want from the fox?”

“I do not know. I would imagine…” He looks down to his hands. “I would imagine that the hunter saw himself in the fox. Such unique powers, can be very isolating. Even finding one’s opposite...” Luke is contemplative for a moment, and Rey considers for the first time that maybe he wasn’t always the ornery old man she met in Ahch-To. That he lived for decades before Rey was even born.

“How does the story end?”

For a moment, Rey is sure that Luke will tell her that there is no ending. That legends are continuous loops with no real beginning nor end. But:

“There are… different versions. According to some, the gods realized their mistake, and faced with the inevitable contradiction, turned the two into stone. The pair was later cast into the stars and remain bright to this day.”

“That seems unlikely, since stars are formed within molecular clouds through nuclear fusion.”

For the first time since the beginning of whatever this is, Luke smiles. “True, true. Then maybe you’ll like the second version?”

“I doubt it.”

It takes Luke a moment to continue, just long enough for Rey to realize that she already knows what he is going to say. Suddenly the deep blue of his eyes is liquid and melancholic, and Rey wonders if Force ghosts can feel sad. 

“According to others, the fox decided to let herself be caught.” 

The thing about dreams is—they don’t often make sense. Rey used to dream a lot on Jakku, of oceans and forests and stars and people, tangled messes with no beginning and no end. So it’s not surprising, that she doesn’t know herself where her next words come from.

“Maz said it was ahead of me.” She sounds petulant, like a child, as she wipes her face with her sleeve. She sounds like a child, and weak, and she is even crying, and—she hates it. She hates this and herself. Though this is just a dream, and maybe everything will be okay. “Maz said it was ahead of me, and yet here I am.” 

Luke sighs. “Rey.” He is looking at her with that expression of his—like he expects better from her, like she should already know. Like it will all be alright. “Rey, it still is.”

 

...

 

She truly thought she’d had enough of desert planets, but Tatooine has a pull on her that can’t quite be explained by the arid climate and the charm of the subterranean dwelling. Its sands, too, are so different from Jakku’s, both in their shades of yellow and their consistency, that whatever advantage Rey thought the first nineteen or so years of her life as a scavenger might afford her is completely lost. She has always been agile and strong, but Kylo is something else altogether, and in the past ten minutes she’s found herself on her ass more times than she cares to count.

“Is this over?” He asks bored, squinting against the sun and looking down at her. 

In an effort to gain ground, Rey pretends to be too exhausted to stand again. Then, when Kylo seems to have lowered his guard a bit, she springs up and lunges at him with her lightsaber.

“What are you—”

She almost— _almost_ —has him, but he blocks her at the last moment and then pushes her a few steps back, retaliating with a swing at her and then with three more, strong enough that fielding them has her arms shake with the tension. His lightsaber used to have crossguards to take into consideration, but those are recently gone, disappeared right as the color of his blade is shifting to an increasingly whiter red, and Kylo has been having to adjust and work on his forms as a result. 

Usually, they are more evenly matched than this. _Not today though_ , Rey concedes as the finds herself flat on her back once more.

“You need to guard your left side after an attack.” His saber is buzzing less than an inch from her throat, close enough that Rey can feel its heat warm her skin.

“Yeah. Well, you need to take your sword and stuff it into your—”

The blade of Kylo’s lightsaber disappears, traded for his hand, and Rey grabs it and lets him help her upright, until they’re standing so close that it’s impossible to say where her training robe ends and his begin.

“Not a good day for you, huh?” He pushes her hair behind her ear, his tone not unkind.

Rey pouts. “My deltoid still hurts. And I hate this sand—it’s so much coarser than Jakku’s, what is even wrong with it?” She wipes morosely at her clothes, trying to sweep away the grains. “And I slept poorly,” she adds, petulant. “Because you were snoring.”

Kylo pulls her to himself, rubbing the portion of her shoulder she injured a few days ago. His fingers dig in her knotted muscles, and if feels even better than last night. When he did the same for her, but in bed, and right as she was about to fall into a dreamless sleep. 

“My poor sand rat,” he murmurs in her ear, gently mocking, and then tightens his grip on her right as she attempts to knee him in the groin. “Poor, _ungrateful_ sand rat.”

They stay like that for an unmeasurable amount of time, letting the hot winds of Tatooine blow around them. When Rey lifts her eyes, she notices that Kylo’s gaze is trained to the sunsets.

“It will get cold, soon,” he tells her without looking away. “We should get home.”

With a sigh, Rey leans her head against his arm, feeling the bond between them flow and tighten. “Yep.”

They don’t move until the sky is dark.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

>  **CW:** Pretty much everyone (except for Rey, Kylo, Maz and the Knights of Ren) dies. Poe dies 'on screen,' and he is sort of the bad guy of the situation; the Resistance (especially post-Leia) is depicted in a negative light, too (FYI, I see this fic as fully canon divergent). Bottom line, if you are a big fan of Poe, you might want to skip this fic! The deaths of Rose, Finn, Leia and other Resistance members are mentioned as having happened in the past, too. Basically, this is a really sad fic and everyone is messed up!


End file.
